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Prime Minister Mark Carney refuses, for now, to tip his hand on whether or not he favours proceeding with the March 17, 2027, expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) to individuals whose sole condition is a mental illness.
The 61-year-old declared to the media that “I like to take informed positions.” He is awaiting the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying's final report.
According to the federal government sources who recently spoke to the Globe and Mail, the joint committee will purportedly recommend pausing the scheduled broadening of the country’s euthanasia regime once again.
The coming weeks will crystallize if this reportage is true, with the Liberal majority government possibly signalling its position on this issue before parliamentarians break for summer recess on June 19. The House of Commons and Senate began a two-week adjournment on May 11.
The committee authorizing Alex Schadenberg to appear as an expert witness during its final meeting on May 5 alone suggests something different is in the air. Consider that the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition director has not been invited to participate in the debate since the original Senate committee deliberations on Bill C7, the legislation that ushered in Track 2 MAiD — the removal of the foreseeable natural death guardrail — six years ago. He also formally engaged in the original parliamentary MAiD debates of 2015 and 2016.
Upon the original formation of the joint committee in May 2021 during the final months of the 43rd Parliament, Schadenberg was forbidden from participating in the statutory review of MAiD. When this review body was reconstituted during the 44th Parliament, he was not granted permission to participate in any of the 42 meetings from April 2022 to December 2023. Many of those sessions were devoted to discussing MAiD for the mentally ill.
Bill C-62, which in 2024 forestalled the expansion of MAiD for three years, contained a provision to reassemble the joint committee and renew discussion about medically killing individuals exclusively contending with a psychological illness. Schadenberg appeared as a witness during the seventh and final meeting.
During the five minutes allotted to him, Schadenberg pressed the case on how Canada is not even in a solid position to credibly discuss expanding euthanasia because the due diligence has not been conducted on how Canada’s current assisted suicide laws are functioning.
“How has the law been implemented?” Schadenberg asked the MPs and senators. “Is it achieving its intended outcomes? Are there abuses of the law based on its original intention? Does the law require amendment? These questions have never been addressed.”
He also cited the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities' call for the repeal of Track 2 MAiD, increased oversight and no further expansion.
In an interview with The Catholic Register, Schadenberg expressed appreciation for how Conservative Senator Yonah Martin, a joint chair of the committee, supported his arguments with a statement agreeing with his central argument, a question on how the current MAiD outcomes make “2027 expansion unsafe.”
“She asked me a question, and I thought, ‘well, that's very good because Martin's always been on the committee from the beginning,' ” said Schadenberg. “She knows exactly that they've never debated the actual law as to how it's working. They've only ever debated expansions.”
Sitting immediately to Schadenberg’s right as a fellow witness on May 5 was Helen Long, the CEO of the Dying with Dignity pro-euthanasia lobbying group. Expectedly, she expressed her support for further expansion.
Alicia Duncan, who has emerged alongside her sister Christie as a prominent grief advocate and critic of Canada’s euthanasia system following the MAiD death of their mother Donna on Oct. 29, 2021, also delivered a presentation via video conference.
The late Donna received MAiD mere hours after being released from a psychiatric unit for a suicide attempt 72 hours beforehand.
“Proponents of psychiatric euthanasia frame my mother’s case as an outlier — it is not,” Alicia told the committee. “Since her death, I have connected with many families across this country who have experienced similar circumstances and are now living with the devastating effects of PTSD conditions that under an expanded regime can become grounds for MAiD.”
She also critiqued how a police investigation into her mother’s death could not proceed because officers were not allowed to access Donna’s MAiD assessment records. Alicia also sought the documentation through a B.C. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act public interest override, but was denied.
Senator Pierre Dalphond and Rosemary Moodie were evidently trying to get Alicia to answer affirmatively to statements about her story that corroborated their viewpoints regarding Canada’s MAiD system through their respective questions. She rendered corrections when detecting inaccuracies in their accounts. She told the Register “it seems that there are some Members of Parliament who are not open to other ideas or that there could be issues with the current regime.”
She noted how Moodie suggested her case “might not have anything to do with the assessors and somehow that makes it okay,” while with Dalphond, it appeared he was “trying to undermine my testimony just by almost implying that I wasn't giving the full story.”
Alicia shared how “it's tough going into these situations.”
My sister and I have both been diagnosed with PTSD since my mom's passing because of the traumatic nature of her death,” said Alicia. “And that is something that I shared in my testimony. For these members not to take that into consideration is hurtful. And I don't think it's very professional either. Within five minutes, there is only so much that you can say in a story.”
Conservative MP Tamara Jansen also asked questions of Duncan. She authored Bill C-218, the legislation slated for a second hour of debate on May 28, at least for now. She had moved her bill down in the order of precedence to allow this committee to complete its meetings.
Now a report needs to be produced. Schadenberg suggested that it is more likely that a new Liberal bill will emerge rather than Jansen’s
(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)
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